Kaela Rivera's The Hungry Forest is a tightly edited, cinematic middle-grade treat that pulses with action, horror, and humanity.
Situated across from the middle school in Traveler's Rest, S.C., is "a missing persons black hole"--a dense forest into which countless people have disappeared over the decades. Brothers Ryan, 12, and Teddy, eight, know especially well not to wander into the forest thanks to their search-and-rescuer father. He maintained a trove of research about those lost to the woodland until he died four months ago. Ryan works to be like his perfect, macho dad while Teddy, who has been embarrassing Ryan by carrying a stuffed bear, has secretly begun looking through his father's notes. One day after school, the brothers hear their father calling to them from the "death-forest." They follow the voice into the trees and must work together to defeat the monsters within, lest they be trapped inside the wood forever.
Rivera, known for her Cece Rios adventure trilogy, deftly constructs a fanciful and genuinely scary (though not gory or overwrought) middle-grade horror tale with themes of grief, acceptance, and identity. Her secondary characters have clear motivations and feel as deeply lived in as her primary ones. (Examples include giant, grotesque brothers who zip and unzip from each other like two vertical halves of one person, and a mysterious figure who shoots arrows that turn their targets into rubies.) Beyond the scares, Rivera centers the story on the tender, beating heart of a family. Teddy asserts himself more directly and begins to shed the shame he felt around his father's death. Ryan is forced to learn he can love a sometimes annoying brother; he also confronts hard truths about his Mexican heritage and how his father passed down the generational trauma of assimilation: "He always told me the way people perceive you can control your life if you let it. So you have to control how they see you first."
The art by Neil Swaab (Time Twisters series) adds to the fantastical frights with individual chapter headers featuring faces warped into trees and creepy masks, as well as a map of the Hungry Forest at story's start. Rivera grounds what could be a silly romp through a magical forest with genuine emotional stakes and gracefully balances realism and fantasy. The Hungry Forest--quickly paced and full of monstrous scares and human heart--is sure to leave readers ravenous for more. --Luis Rendon
Shelf Talker: In this cinematic middle-grade treat, brothers Ryan and Teddy follow the voice of their dead father into a forest that is a "missing persons black hole."